Explore the impact of collectivism on conflict management styles: a Turkish study

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of collectivism on conflict management styles in Turkey and to help conflict management researchers and practitioners better understand conflict and conflict management in an international context. Design/methodology/approach -Self-administered questionnaires with the ROCI scale were used in this study. Data were collected by surveying 244 managerial employees from both public and private organizations. Factor analysis and regression analysis were then used to explore the relationships between conflict management styles and different aspects of collectivism. Differences in demographic factors were also discussed.Findings -This study shows Turkish people are more likely to use collaborating style, instead of compromising or avoiding as expected from a collectivistic culture. Further, different aspects of collectivism have different effects on Turkish conflict management styles: the importance of competitive success leads to preferences for competing style; the value of working alone leads to less collaboration; the norms of subordination of personal needs to group interest are positively related to more collaborating and accommodating; and the beliefs of the effects of personal pursuit on group productivity are positively related to more compromising. Originality/value -While Turkey has become more important in world markets, very few studies have been conducted to explore Turkish conflict management styles. This paper examines the ranking of preferences in conflict management methods in Turkey, as well as the impact of collectivism on different conflict management styles, which extends the understanding of cross-cultural differences in conflict management.

The Impact of Ethnic Background and Demographics on Conflict Management Styles’ Preferences: A Study of Six Sub-Cultures of Pakistan

“…This study supports the dynamic culture school of thought Taras et al, 2011) as results of this study rejected the presumptions of static categorization of countries / national cultures based on Hofstede (1980Hofstede ( , 1991 static cultural values theory and its preferences for conflict management styles because this study shows that ethnic background (sub-culture) play an important role in shaping the preferences for conflict management styles. Accordingly, this study supported those previous studies which rejected the static categorization of cultures at aggregate national level as individualist or collectivists, and therefore were supposed to prefer some styles more than other (see for example, Ting-Toomy et al, 1991;Cai & Fink, 2002;Ma, Erkus & Tabak, 2010;Croucher, 2011;Croucher, Holody, Hicks, Oommen, & DeMaris, 2011;Khakimova, 2008;Hung, 2005;Taras et al, 2011).…”

Impact of Conflict Management Styles on Team Performance on Supervisors of Teams in Universities

“…Conflict management (CM) has received considerable attention from Researchers over the years. Examples of CM-related subjects involve studies on conflict management and group decision making (Kuhn et al, 2000), conflict management effect on group effectiveness (DeChurch and Marks, 2001), CM styles and leadership effectiveness (Barbuto Jr and Xu, 2006), differences in conflict management styles from different countries (Kim et al, 2007), exploring conflict management (Stanley and Algert, 2007), CM styles and employee attitudinal outcomes (Chan et al, 2008), conflict management and forgiveness (Rizkalla et al, 2008), team satisfaction and performance (Liu et al, 2008), conflict management between and within teams (Hempel et al, 2009), CM styles and team performance (Somech et al, 2009), the relationship between emotional intelligence and CM styles and job performance (Shih and Susanto, 2010), the influence of collectivism and CM styles (Ma et al, 2010), leadership styles and CM styles (Saeed et al, 2014), CM styles and workplace bullying (Baillien al., 2014), organizational power and CM styles (Riasi and Asadzadeh, 2015) as well as cultural orientation and CM styles (Caputo et al, 2018). Generally, the majority of studies that conducted on CM used five common styles which were avoiding, compromising, dominating, integrating, and obliging (Rahim, 2000;Rizkalla Et al., 2008; Riasi and Asadzadeh, 2015; Zaman and Saif, 2016).…”

Role of Language and Corporate Communication in Greater China

“…Scholars of confl ict management tended to analyze confl ict management along the high-context and low-context culture orientation ( Ting-Toomey 1985 ;Trubisky et al 1991 ;Yu 1997Yu -1998 or individualism and collectivism dimension (Hofstede 1991 ;Jehn and Weldon 1997 ;Ma et al 2010 ;Peng 2003 ;Tse et al 1994 ). Scholars of confl ict management tended to analyze confl ict management along the high-context and low-context culture orientation ( Ting-Toomey 1985 ;Trubisky et al 1991 ;Yu 1997Yu -1998 or individualism and collectivism dimension (Hofstede 1991 ;Jehn and Weldon 1997 ;Ma et al 2010 ;Peng 2003 ;Tse et al 1994 ).…”